For city scapes and stuff there are a lot of different ways to skin the cat too, you can use photos or backdrops and just build the geometry that you need to for the 3d effect and often times this can produce some stunningly nice renders. Also, if you get C4 or C5 you can model the stuff yourself and do some nice shader work to make them convincing without a whole lot of hassle. p.s. I think C4 reads max. (I think)